Jade Empire: Special Edition

Finished Jade Empire three times a few years ago and now I am addicted again. Apart from Gothic I+II, this game has the best atmosphere I ve seen so far. Setting is clearly oriental, but has nothing to do with anime (dont get me wrong, I love anime style), it is more like classic kung fu movies. Yes, combat can be boring if you dont experiment with styles and harmonic combos, but I love the way there is no warrior/mage/thief and you are rewarded for using everything you have - weapons, magic, fists or even tranformation into demons. Story is great and I was literary cought off guard a few times, even though many people will surely find the plot predictable. And there are some great side quests you dont want to miss. Seriously, if you like RPGs, fighting, good stories, chinese culture, or even one of these things, just grab the game for that price and give it a chance. One of the biggest advantage of Jade Empire is that it is quite unique and you will find no such experience in any other game.

Well for me, if I am rating a game as 5 star, then the definition of a 5 star game is something that *I* loved and will never forget. For me, Jade Empire is the best CRPG I ever played. This stands shoulder to shoulder with KOTOR I, Ultima 4&5, and the Fallouts. So, what makes this game so great. Firstly, I must admit, I'm not a typical game player, I fall into the 'easy play' group (roughly 10% of the gamer population), and as such I'm not looking for a challenge so much as an experience. Additionally, when I play games, I usually draw my humour from essentially being an evil snot, and no game ever game me as much freedom to do that as this one. The chaos and horror you can inflict on your fellow travellers and the the story world in this game is legendary! This game would have me rolling around on the floor howling with laughter at the evil actions I was doing one second, then feeling nauseous a moment later for having enjoyed them. I don't know if the criticisms are correct about the story being boring, presumably those players completed the story as a good-two-shoes, but I played the most evil character I have ever seen in any CRPG and the story was superb from my perspective. As for the combat, I enjoyed it. It was quick, exciting, not too hard, and quite tactical (rock-paper-siscors style). Combat played out not unlike a God Of War style of play with quick switching styles/weapons for different combinations of enemies and taking them on in a certain order etc, but in kung-fu style. Compared to other CRPGs of the era (Elder Scrolls, Fable, etc) these Bioware 'adventure rpgs' were just heaps more fun (although possibly with less replay value). I grew up in the 80's, so I have played (and loved) many of the classics that GOG has brought back, and they are the games that come up in discussions with other gamers of the same age, but for me Jade Empire has joined that select group.

This game is enormously fun & engaging, but I have run into three really unpleasant bugs that deserve to be the focus of my review. I will present them in the order that I encountered them: 1.) Occasionally the viewpoint will switch from forward to straight down. Even more rarely, it will switch back on its own, but more often I have reset it by moving to a different map. Not the most fun workaround in the world, but that still makes this bug the least intractable of the three. 2.) People that are supposed to attack me instead stand around being all neutral and invulnerable, with no conversation. Two of these people blocking a path ended my first playthrough; I physically could not get my character to the place where act 2 finishes. Backing up to a previous scene did not open the path. On my second playthrough I experienced the same bug in a different (and non-blocking) location. 3.) On my second playthrough, shortly after the end of act 1, the framerate dropped to <10fps. This is (ahem) highly incompatible with the quick and decisive real-time combat mechanics. I will also be submitting this list to GOG directly, and hopefully I will be able to write and updated 4- or 5-star review on some future date. In the meantime, people who might buy this game deserve to know. P.S.: My system is brand new as of July 2016, runs win-10 on an AMD A10-9600P with Radeon R5 graphics.

This game feels very experimental. Sure it's got your standard Bioware mechanics like decision-making, romance, parties etc. but the lore is horribly shallow and the game's world is a confusing mish-mash of different influences. The story is your standard "you're the chosen one and you gotta save the world" and perhaps Bioware took this too seriously because there are basically no consequences for killing everyone you meet, despite being repeatedly told that messing with the wrong people is dangerous. The voice acting is also extremely hit and miss. Some characters just sound awful and few if any even have a remotely Asian accent. I appreciate Bioware's attempt at replacing the terrible turnbased combat of KOTOR, but the Jade Empire's combat is just garbage. Upgrade one skill to the max then just mash left mouse until the enemy dies and repeat with the next. You can even get a gun at one point which you can upgrade to absolutely cheese the more difficult bosses without even getting hit once. On the bright side, Jack Wall did an absolutely phenomenal job with the soundtrack to the game, which is graciously included with the GOG edition.

Really fun game with a lot of different options. Great graphics for an old game.